Charles W. Morgan close to being ready for its return to New Bedford

Steve Urbon continues his series on the last wooden whaling ship, which will make its 38th voyage this summer, including an eight-day visit to New Bedford, where she was built in 1841.

STEVE URBON

MYSTIC, Conn. — Roger Hambidge has one foot in the 19th century and the other in the 21st. As a master shipwright he is in charge of the restoration of the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan, the last of its kind in existence.

As a man capable of enormous attention to detail, he's a world-class professional ship model builder, and he proudly informs a visitor that one of his boats is prominently displayed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

At Mystic, Hambidge spends a lot of his time documenting the restoration of a whaleship that was already the most documented ship afloat.

Every plank, every beam, every futtock, every fitting of the Morgan has been meticulously recorded and photographed for the archive.

He is impressed with the ship. "She's a slaughterhouse, a refinery and a tanker all at once," he said. After this restoration, she could conceivably go whaling again. But it wasn't long after the restoration crew realized that the Morgan would be seaworthy that the decision was made to sail her around the New England ports this summer, especially including her home port, New Bedford.

Mystic Seaport President and CEO Stephen White told The Standard-Times that when he broke the news to Whaling Museum Director James Russell last year "he just turned white" at the staggering news. The restorers like to joke that they expect New Bedford will close the hurricane barrier to prevent the Morgan from ever leaving again.

The $7.5 million restoration of the Morgan is winding down after more than five years at Mystic Seaport. This for a ship that took the Hillman Shipyard nine months to build in 1841, including a work stoppage, according to Hambidge.

Anyone who has restored an old house can understand how expensive and time-consuming a ship restoration can be, with the added work of documenting and recording everything in computer files.

Quentin Snediker, director of the H.B. duPont Shipyard at Mystic Seaport, gave some eye-opening statistics. The project used some 5,000 bronze spikes, made by a subcontractor. There were "six or seven thousand" trunnels, narrow squared-off dowels that, done right, hold wooden joints together stronger and longer than metal. And 325 futtocks, the heavy white oak beam sections that, when joined together, form the ribs of the ship.

"The quality of wood was challenging," said Snediker. It simply isn't possible to find large quantities of old-growth timber, not to mention the lignum vitae, or ironwood, the hardest and heaviest wood on Earth, now classified as endangered.

The shipyard has gotten lucky, too. Snediker said that when the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital took a piece of land from the Charlestown Navy Yard, excavations discovered a trove of timber, old wood, in amazingly good shape after being covered and protected from the elements for a century or more. It took 18 tractor trailers to haul all that precious timber to Mystic Seaport, the last shipyard in America capable of restoring a ship like the Morgan.

One might think that in the quest for total authenticity, the restorers would be using nothing but 19th century tools and techniques.

That's true to some degree. There is a tremendous amount of manual labor involved in shaping a beam or forging iron fittings.

But look around the ship today and one sees power tools everywhere.

Shipwright Trevor Allen said that while power tools are common, sometimes the only tools for the job are the old ones.

For instance, there is an enormous socket slick, or chisel, that is relied on frequently, Allen said. "It's used a lot in paring and fitting" timbers. "Occasionally you need the old-style tools."

So for one thing he'll use power tools. For another, manual tools like an adze or a hatchet.

Snediker said that the shipwrights may use power tools for any but the last surfacing of a part. To keep everything looking authentic to the original, "the last thing to touch the surface will be a hand tool, for hand hewing," he said.

On the opposite side of the village at Mystic (which is closed to the public until mid-February) stands the James Driggs blacksmith shop. Like the shipyard, this is still a going operation because the Morgan required hundreds of wrought iron fittings of many sizes and descriptions.

The shop was opened in 1885 at Merrill's Wharf in New Bedford, on the land now occupied by the Waterfront Grille's parking lot. Like a valuable accessory, it followed the Morgan to the Col. Green estate in South Dartmouth in 1924, and followed her once again when the Morgan made the trip to Mystic.

Shipsmith Mike Saari gave visitors a complete tour of the forges, anvils and power hammer used to create accurate reproductions of the parts needed for the Morgan restoration.

He held up chain plate, an iron arm that is fastened to the hull, looped around a disc of ironwood at the other end, with eyelets to pass rigging through.

The central tool in the shop, the anvil, is the original. The brick chimneys of the forges are copies made by photographing the originals, said Saari.

One tool represents the electrification of the shop around the turn of the 20th century: the massive power hammer, driven by electric motor by leather belts, making a racket and saving a lot of work.

Saari displays a history of harpoon tips, all made at the shop, and is especially proud of a very smoothly surfaced Temple Toggle. That is the harpoon tip that swiveled when a shear pin was released when a whale was struck. The swiveling action locked the harpoon in place and immediately doubled the efficiency of the whaler who used it.

Times changed, petroleum was discovered, whale oil went into decline, and in 1924 the whaleship Wanderer foundered on the rocks near Cuttyhunk. "There was no work anymore. No more whalecraft," said Saari. The blacksmith shop closed its doors, and Green came along to take it to his estate, where it was put on display until 1941, when it came to Mystic.

There are fewer than 90 days' worth of work on the Morgan, which the restorers said is on schedule to make the 38th Voyage starting in June.

And while last summer's launch showed off the massive hull and the skillful work repairing it, the re-stepping of the masts is what visually signaled the Morgan's rebirth.

Today the Morgan's masts are in place, with silver coins representing the key dates of 1841, 1941 and 2013 beneath them.

The riggers are going aloft, sorting out and securing the lines. Below decks there are places that await a coat of paint, but all the major work is done, leaving a single beam, a fore-and-aft beam known as a carlin, as the sole remaining original from 1841, according to Hambidge.

Soon, there will be more time for the model-building.

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